Space, Place, and Policing: Exploring Geographies of Research and Practice

Abstract

This special issue of Policing highlights the importance and impact that geographical perspectives have had on the exchanges between police practitioners and researchers. For policing scholars, space, places, and the physical and social environment have served as significant contextual backdrops as far back as early policing classics such as Banton’s (1964),The Policeman in the Community, Wilson’s (1968),Varieties of Police Behavior, Cain’s (1973) Society and the Policeman’s Role, Muir’s Streetcorner Politicians (1977), the Kansas City Patrol Experiment (Kelling et al., 1974), and Punch’s (1979) Policing the Inner City. Additionally, although not focused on policing, environmental criminologists and crime pattern theorists (see Brantingham and Brantingham, 1984, 1991, 1993 see also discussions by Wortley and Mazerolle, 2008) and those studying routine activities (see Felson, 1987, 1994; Cohen and Felson, 1979) and situational crime prevention (see Clarke, 1980, 1983), were early pioneers in exploring why crime occurred at particular places and what could be done about it (see further discussion by Eck and Weisburd, 1995; Weisburd, 2002; Bottoms, 2011). These perspectives provided policing scholars and law enforcement agents with further understanding of the aetiology of crime that went beyond individual dispositions, inspiring a wider range of thinking regarding the potential of law enforcement to address crime problems.